Recent advances in cellular technology, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), have transformed public safety communications. The advances enable better protection of first responders at an incident scene, such as police, fire and ambulance personnel, along with protection of the communities they serve.
Rich-media information is available to decision makers in various locations, which enables good decisions to be made quickly and safely. The Rich-media information can include streaming video of an incident scene, which can be made available to both first responders and coordination personnel. This enables efficient determination of risks, which facilitates good decision making, as well as enabling efficient communication between stakeholders and efficient coordination of resources.
Despite these great advances in cellular networking technology, bandwidth is still a scarce resource in many cellular networks. While bandwidth in such networks has increased in recent years, demand for bandwidth has increased at at least similar rates, if not higher, as high-bandwidth applications such as streaming video become more popular. Similar bandwidth limitations affect Public Safety Radio.
Portable wireless devices are commonly able to support a plurality of wired and wireless data networking standards, including cellular standards and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards. A shortcoming of today's technology is that there is currently no effective way to manage the use of networks at an incident scene to suit Public Safety needs. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method and apparatus for data communication.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.